Since the day of Donald Trump’s surprising election win, Democrats have vowed a “blue wave” of voting for the 2018 midterms to limit his powers as president. Since early voter turnout generally favors Democratic candidates, some GOP candidates are “concerned” by record numbers of voters who have already hit the polls ahead of the November 6 election day.
"Record Turnout" is the headline in Texas and in Georgia. Let's sustain in in the other 48 states. If you have a ballot, mark it and return it. If you can vote early, do it. Two weeks to turn the nation around. #BlueWave #FlipTheHouse #FlipTheSenate https://t.co/HOHduHSjcy
— Barbara Boxer (@BarbaraBoxer) October 23, 2018
At a campaign event last Friday, Georgia GOP candidate and Secretary of State Brian Kemp was caught on tape expressing his concern about the massive numbers of people showing up to vote early.
‘Brian Kemp, Georgia Secretary of State and the Republican nominee for Georgia governor, expressed at a ticketed campaign event that his Democratic opponent Stacey Abrams’ voter turnout operation “continues to concern us, especially if everybody uses and exercises their right to vote,” according to audio obtained by Rolling Stone.’
Audio leaked to @RollingStone reveals @BrianKempGA telling attendees at a closed-door campaign event that @staceyabrams’s voter turnout operation “continues to concern us, especially if everybody uses and exercises their right to vote.” Read my report. https://t.co/uAob3x4TVx
— Jamil Smith (@JamilSmith) October 23, 2018
Kemp is currently under fire for trying to prevent voters from turning up to the polls. The secretary of state is in charge of overseeing elections and registrations to vote even while also running as a candidate for governor.
The governor’s race in Georgia between Brian Kemp and Stacey Abrams is a virtual tie. But Kemp has invoked the so-called exact-match law to suspend 53,000 voter-registration applications, for infractions as minor as a hyphen missing from a surname. https://t.co/RhCMMbcQEx
— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) October 23, 2018
Kemp seems poised to lose to the first black female candidate in Georgia’s history, Stacey Abrams, and has voters alarmed by his manipulation of policies that he is clearly using a way to prevent black voters from participating in the election process. Apparently, he thought he had the vote under control, but the long lines of early voters proved otherwise.
‘They have just an unprecedented number of that, which is something that continues to concern us, especially if everybody uses and exercises their right to vote — which they absolutely can — and mail those ballots in, we gotta have heavy turnout to offset that.’
The person who provided the audio to Rolling Stone proved the veracity of the tape by also providing a receipt for their donation to Kemp’s campaign, which was required to attend the event.
Hear the full audio below:
Featured image via Flickr by Patricia Barton under a Creative Commons license
